Fake Auto Tag Shop Shut Down

Two Men Charged With Selling Plates

October 8, 1998|By KARLA SCHUSTER Staff Writer

With a few office machines and some stolen temporary license tags, two Broward County men turned a run-down storefront into a factory for fake plates and sold hundreds of illegal tags before police shut them down this week.

For about a year, Salvatore LaBella, 69, and Stephen Foster, 56, sold the fake temporary tags for $60 to $100 each from a store at 620 NW 42nd St. in unincorporated Broward County near Pompano Beach.

Police said LaBella took real tags and temporary registrations from a legitimate auto dealer he knew in Hollywood, copied them and returned them before the dealer realized they were gone. The dealer, AA Dirt Cheap, shut down in July and is not implicated in the scam, police said.

``It wasn't super-high tech, but they made them [the fake tags) look pretty legitimate,'' Sgt. Mick Weiner, of the Broward County Sheriff's Office Auto Theft Unit, said on Wednesday after announcing the arrests.

So far, police have confiscated about a dozen of the fake laminated-paper plates but believe there are hundreds more out there, most sold to people who are unlicensed or whose cars are uninsured or unregistered. Temporary tags generally last only a month, so many people who purchased the fake tags returned month after month to buy new ones, Weiner said. Often, LaBella and Foster would recopy the same tag number, but with a new expiration date.

``Some people who bought the tags didn't know better, but many are dangerous drivers who don't have the necessary paperwork to get tags legitimately,'' Weiner said.

Authorities seized a copier, a laminating machine, 10 copied tags and 52 copied registrations when they raided the storefront on Tuesday.

LaBella, already on probation from a 1996 Delray Beach arrest for fradulently obtaining a drivers' license, faces three counts of counterfeiting license plates. Foster faces one count of the same charge, but authorities expect more charges as they find and confiscate more of the illegal tags.

``We've alerted everyone in our district, and we are still out there, trying to track down the people who bought the tags,'' said Broward County Sheriff's Office spokesman Kirk J. Englehardt.